Degrees/Certifications

MA in Medieval Studies – Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1980

BA in English – Seton Hall University, 1979

Experience

I joined the faculty of Lynchburg College in 1989, where I teach medieval English literature and Latin, and serve as Program coordinator for the minor in Latin and advisor to the Latin Club. I also teach and advise in the Medieval and Renaissance Studies minor program.

I am drawn to the study of both Latin and Middle English literature through a fascination with theatre and dance, especially the ways in which narrative and lyric poetry can be performed for audiences through storytelling, recitation, and acting.

Professional/Research Interests

My research interests include both literary studies and teaching methods. Research in progress focuses on classical and medieval Latin texts as sources for both composition and critical theory in Middle English literature.

As a Visiting Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Summers 2012-2014, I have been examining Latin sources for the legend of the Fall of the Angels as related to early English biblical drama. A larger ongoing project is identification of medieval universal chronicles as potential models for the sequencing of the York, Chester, N-Town, and Towneley plays. One such chronicle, the thirteenth-century Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale, is also a source for lines on the fall of the angels in Thomas Chaundler’s play, Liber Apologeticus de Omni Statu Humanae Naturae (A Defence of Human Nature in Every State) (c. 1460), ed. Doris Enright-Clark Shoukri (1974). My paper, “Performance Spaces in Thomas Chaundler’s Liber Apologeticus,” on this play was recently published in the journal Early Theatre 18.1 (2015): 33-49. It identifies potential performance venues for the play, based on the illustrations, text, and related architectural settings, including the ante-chapel at New College, Oxford, where Thomas Chaundler studied and taught.

With respect to teaching strategies, at the American Classical League (ACL) Institute, Memphis, TN, June 29, 2013, I presented a paper on teaching Intermediate Latin with textual parallels, “Specula Litterarum: Teaching Classical Authors with Latin for the New Millennium 2.” Two invited presentations on this method followed: 1) for the Bolchazy-Carducci webinar series, September 17, 2013, and 2) at the workshop, “Helping Students Make Connections Between Latin Texts,” with LeaAnn Osburn and Donald Sprague, Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Baylor University, Waco, TX, April 5, 2014. This paper was published in the Winter 2014 issue of Classical Outlook.

My book, Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama, for the series Studies in Early English Drama, ed. Alan Somerset, University of Toronto Press (2006) is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in Medieval and Renaissance Drama on classroom use of historical documents published by the Records of Early English Drama (REED), a project based at the University of Toronto, with the goal to compile, edit, and publish documents relating to drama and entertainment in England prior to 1642. This collection of articles offers ways of researching and interpreting these historical documents as relevant to undergraduate and graduate courses in theatre, literature, history, paleography and historical linguistics.

“Aristotle in Late Medieval England: Giles of Rome on Rhetoric and Acting” Research Opportunities in Medieval and Renaissance Drama 47 (2008): 82-106.

“Going to HEL: REED and Diachronic Linguistics.” Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama. Ed. Elza C. Tiner. Studies in Early English Drama 7. Ed. Alan Somerset. University of Toronto Press, 2006. 176-193. On teaching the History of the English Language (HEL) from REED documents that provide evidence of surviving Middle English dialect features.

“English Law in the York Trial Plays,” on the legal procedure in the trials of Jesus leading up to the crucifixion in the York Plays, in The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, Ed. Clifford Davidson (New York: AMS Press, 2005). 140-149.

Other publications include articles about medieval poet John Lydgate as a songwriter and biographies of patrons of traveling companies for the following REED collections: Cambridge (ed. Alan Nelson);Cumberland/Westmorland/Gloucestershire (ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield); Coventry. (ed. Reginald Ingram); Devon (ed. John Wasson); York (ed. Alexandra Johnston); and in progress, for Warwickshire/Staffordshire (ed. Alan Somerset). I have also published papers on applications of classical and medieval rhetoric to modern composition.

Personal Information

For fun, I enjoy traveling; dancing; writing academic articles, essays, and poetry; listening to country music; taking long walks; and tracking down solutions to research problems in the library.

My astronomer husband, Dr. Harold Butner, provides unique opportunities for interesting vacations through his observing trips to international telescopes. Harold is now teaching astronomy and physics at James Madison University.

The photo at the right – symbolic of our lives – is a scene from the beach park near our former apartment in Hilo, Hawaii, home of several telescopes on Mauna Kea. I leave you to guess which dog is the one about to go off the raft.